30ish Online Business Ideas to Help You Start Your New Business or Compliment Your Existing One

I know, ‘Digital’ can be a tear-inducing word! But I’m here to show you the simple things you can do to either start your new business online, or compliment your existing business with digital offers.

It wouldn’t surprise me if you’d been put off by the ‘ick factory’ that happens when you Google phrases like ‘passive income’ or ‘WFH’?

Cue:

Gag-inducing ‘hustle’ entrepreneurs
Cryptocurrency gurus
Property investment ‘experts’
The sippers and flippers*

*Folks sipping champagne in an infinity pool, or worse, flipping ‘cash’ in front of a fancy car or designer store!

That isn’t what the world of digital products or passive income should look like and I’m going to run down 30 (ish) ‘ick free’ ideas for doing it. You’ll be detouring wide of the ‘gross factory’ and instead, going via Ideaville on the fun bus! (Yep, I felt you roll your eyes!)

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30ish Online Business Ideas to Help You Start Your New Business or Compliment Your Existing One

Existing business owners should be encouraged to consider those people who don’t buy your stuff already (because they can’t afford it, because ‘logistics’ or because they want to do it themselves). You’ll find that you can design a ‘thing’ that’s just perfect for them!

Just thinking about starting your business? After this, you’ll be walking away with an idea that doesn’t require £5k of stock under your bed, to turn your kitchen into a local branch of the Post Office or to work your fingers to the bone, just to scrape a measly profit.

So have a nosey at this list, and leave brimming with ideas for your first, next or final digital product that’ll put cash in the bank and time on the clock!

Take A Slice

Coming up, I’m going to present you with the MANY possibilities that your business could revel in – from affiliate marketing and print on demand, to subscription models and courses, and everything in between. But let’s address the elephant in the room first shall we? Before you scoff at the idea of putting ‘just another course’ out into the noise that is ‘the internet’, let me hit you with some anti-sceptic facts:

One out of every three people you see around you is an online shopper (Oberlo)
“More than 60% of people learn new things from digital content,” known as ‘micro-learning’ (Thinkific, DLT 2023 R)
It’s projected that e-learning alone will grow to $325 Billion by 2025 (Global Industry Analysts & Forbes)
The creator economy is valued at over $100 billion (Thinkific, DLT 2023 Report)

Lesson: don’t dismiss this potentially lucrative cash-cow that your new or existing business could benefit from, just because of the field of negative hype (see what I did there!). There’s pie-a-plenty – take a slice!

30ish Ideas for You to Ponder

You can use the ideas here to EITHER:

Enhance your existing business offers (give more with less)
Create a whole new business from scratch (you should go on a Rebel Business School Course if you haven’t already)

To get to your ideas, (you know, the ones that best fit your values and what you love), we’re going to focus on selling a solution. That solution will fall into one of three distinct categories:

(Product) Sell a product as a solution
(Information) Sell expertise as a solution
(Facilitate/Host) Sell a community as a solution

Sell a Product Solution

If you already have a product-based business, ask yourself, “what else might my customers need from me?”

Use affiliate marketing, drop shipping or print on demand to provide them with it!

Ecommerce powered by:

Affiliate marketing
Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon)
White label
Print on demand
Drop shipping

Instead of (or as well as!) the traditional route to market:

create product yourself
find a supplier of your product/private label
online marketplace selling

Keep your customer at the front of your mind. What do they want or need, and how can you provide them with that in the easiest way?

Sell a Community Solution

Find a community of people who need your help to bring them together and charge a fee accordingly:

Support (with an on-going problem)
Community (a sense of belonging)
Discussion (talk it through)
Diagnosis (identify a problem)
Mastermind (solution driven)
Memberships (community driven)
Subscriptions (drip-fed)

Sell an Expertise Solution

Step 1: Package

You can package your expertise in any number of ways. As long as it’s right for your customers, it’ll be a sure-fire hit:

In person
Pre-recorded (MP3/4)
Digital live delivery
Workshops / group classes
Tutoring / 1 to 1
Written
Graphic-lead
Combined / Hybrid

This process can be referred to as ‘productising’. It’s essentially making a saleable product out of the ideas in your awesome brain!

Step 2: Delivery

You can then go on to consider one of many ways of delivering your solution too. Mix and match these with the packages above to create the perfect blend for your customers and the experience you want them to have: